About This Tour

The Alcatraz Evening Tour combines a guided tour of the island with a self-guided audio tour of the cell house. Publications such as the Los Angeles Times, CSAA's Via magazine, and the popular Bay Area Backroads travel television show have featured the Alcatraz evening tour, and it has been called the Best Tour of the Bay Area by San Francisco Magazine.

The Alcatraz Evening tour is limited to just a few hundred visitors per evening and offers visitors tours and activities not available during the day. Visitors can also experience spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf waterfront, Ghirardelli Square and spectacular sunsets, accompanied by the twinkling of lights as the city edges into night.

Well-versed guides afford the evening visitors compelling stories of what life on the island was like for the convicts and prison staff, as well as a description of the Island's history, from its discovery by Spanish naval officer Juan Manuel de Ayala, its designation as a military reservation and construction of a fortress, military prison and lighthouse, to its conversion to a Federal prison in 1933, and inception as a national recreation area in 1969.

Visitors can walk through the cell block, even go into some of the cells, all the while imagining the convicts looking out at the spectacular scenery and contrasting it to their severe and solitary surroundings.

There are about thirty different special programs altogether - five to ten are offered on any given night. Evening tour visitors can often tour places such as the hospital including the old operating and the x-ray room, and the cell of Robert Stroud, the infamous Bird Man of Alcatraz.

As an example, of special features available only on the evening tour Kate Kennelly, who manages the interpretive programs for the Golden Gate National Parks Association, leads her own special limited admission program, looking at Alcatraz from the guards' perspective. Kat takes people up a ladder and through a narrow passageway to the gun gallery where you really get a sense that the guards were as much prisoners here as were the convicts.

We maintain a listing of available time slots and update the inventory daily (hourly during busy periods), but we cannot guarantee that the time you select as your preferred departures time will always be available. We encourage you to select one or more “alternate” departure times, especially during busy summer months and around holidays.

No food or drinks are permitted on Alcatraz. No pets are permitted on Alcatraz. The National Park Service administers Alcatraz Island as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA).